Upon arriving in Washington, many settlers assumed that the lands they had entered were perfect representations of unspoiled nature. They explored clearings and meadows that fostered a bounty of plant and animal life richer than any land they had seen before. The idea of “perfect paradise” is one that’s persisted about the Americas for decades since, leading one Smithsonian botanist in a 1991 book to call a part of the New World “a world of barely perceptible human disturbance.”